The Six by Catherine Maven Copyright © 2008             It is a jolly scene, for a dungeon.   The Six stand side by side in front of the elongated hearth, each with his or her own cooking pot, laughing and stealing ingredients from one another's store to add to their own pots.   Even in the dim light of the fire, you would not consider them a pretty sight.   With matted and bedraggled hair, brown sackcloth garments worn to threadbare, and feet and legs encrusted with dirt, the sparkle in their eyes is paradoxical. They are prisoners in this underground room, if one may use so nice a term.   More like a cave, some thirty feet in circumference, but without egress to the outside world, if you discount the narrow shafts for the air vent and chimney flue.   There is no furniture, either, save the sleeping pallets that line one wall.   The room is lit from some invisible source, and is in light and darkness in roughly-equal measures. There is a food-bin which is always ful

Dandelion in a Ditch (A Fable) by Catherine Maven 1996 (Edited May 2018) Once upon a time, there was a dandelion growing in a ditch, surrounded on all sides by dozens of her cousin-dandelions.   Warmed by sunshine, or tickled by rain, the dandelion was perfectly content.   But then, in the course of one short day, everything changed.   Ten people walked by the ditch that day, and although Dandelion usually paid no attention to these transient beings, on this particular day she found herself forced to listen. The first person who walked by stooped low enough to smell and stroke the dandelion.   The d andelion was unused to such personal attention, but it felt good.   The person said, "Oh, Dandelion!   You are my favourite spring flower!"   Dandelion was amazed and pleased.   While a moment before, she had been just herself in a ditch, she now knew herself to be someone's favourite flower.   She pulled her stalk a little straighter and stretched herself